Do you ask yourself how your job change could affect your church? Do you consider how your moving would impact the work of God through your church in your community? Do you seek insight into how your decision to leave or stay at your local church would affect the advancement of the gospel?

Understanding ecclesiology’s rightful place among other doctrines and grasping how the Gospel-centered nature of the church positions that doctrine in service of the Great Commission is just the grand beginning of treasures.

The church’s attention to Jesus’ return seems to be seasonal, with interest rising and falling based upon a host of issues, most especially current geo-political events. The need of the hour is not for more end-times speculation, but an impact upon how we live the Christian life every day.

Life transitions remind me that identity is a complex topic and not something that can be reduced to one or two things, like being a wife and mother. There are many layers that make up who we are, but the one most important layer is the foundation.

Though gift-giving is special and can be done in a godly way, why would we want to miss this glorious time with our church family feasting on the joy of heaven in order to simply open earthly treasures?

“I’m a private person,” we might argue. “It’s no one else’s business,” we might say. “It’s my cross to bear,” we might conclude. And yet, we cannot weep with each other if we never see or know that we are weeping.

If you talk a big game about the gospel, but don't live like it's true, the people in your life will begin to suspect you don't actually believe it. Worse yet, they may begin to disbelieve it themselves.

These two young Christian women were nearing the end of their undergraduate degrees. Neither had a job lined up after graduation or any expectation of a "ring by spring," which at their Christian college validates the whole school-debt-without-a-job situation. They had a look in their eyes that said "life is getting way too real."

I've come to recognize that while there are times to use digital communication, there are also plenty of times to move in a different direction. Here are a few principles I’ve discovered for my own pastoral ministry.

All pastors should study church history, but there is an ever-increasing need for pastors to study their church's own history and be shaped by the stories of faithful saints and the faithfulness of God.

Most Christians have an undeveloped, insufficiently informed understanding of what it means to be called to the ministry. Consider these ten questions, which serve as indicators God has indeed called you to ministry.

Session 3

Every family devotion time isn’t a home run. Sometimes it’s a sacrifice bunt that you believe God will somehow use in the story of their lives. So we choose, by faith, not to be discouraged, but instead to believe in a God who is drawing our kids’ hearts to Himself.

To be sure, repentance is turning from something. But salvation doesn’t come to those who turn from sin towards nothing. Our struggles deman we turn and run to the One who can save and satisfy us completely.

We've been pleased to bring on board a couple of editorial assistants to help with the day-to-day publication of FTC resources and other Midwestern publishing needs, and it's my privilege to introduce them to you.

We sometimes expect pastors leaving under bad terms to leave a bad taste in the church’s mouth, but we don’t really think about what can go wrong when an otherwise good pastor leaves under otherwise good circumstances.

If you want to give really good, eternally significant gifts to your children, become poor in spirit, take up your cross, walk in freedom from sin, and be willing to do whatever Jesus asks of you in this life.

Being involved in a church internship is an opportunity to throw yourself at the mercy of seasoned pastors who know more than you, love you, and who want to see you do well for the sake of Christ’s Church.

For most people, contentment doesn't come naturally. It's necessary for Christ-followers to put in the work of learning to be content with what God has given us, trusting that what He has allowed is what is best for us.

Dear Wormwood: two years ago, your subject crossed the point of no return, embracing the Enemy’s Son. Luckily for us, he embraced as “gospel truth” some of the splendidly simple, yet profoundly effective lies that you whispered in his ear..."

We naturally assume the people who possess the greatest and most effective gifts are also the people who are walking most closely with God. We falsely equate giftedness with holiness and link ability with divine intimacy. The Bible tells us otherwise.

This week's links equip readers in the areas of singleness within the church, how to rightly orient our moods, helpful steps for fostering intimacy, how to love a new pastor, and an answer to a common question about race.

Throughout the Scriptures, believers are challenged to respond to society in a way reflective of the amazing love and grace we have received from God, while not allowing thoughts of self-preservation to dictate the ways in which we interact with our culture.

For a people prone to forget, Paul's words to Timothy are a stirring call to rememberance. The reminder that Christ is at the center of all of life and ministry is a drink of cool water to parched and thirsty souls.

It is too high and too glorious a calling for just anyone to preach just anything for just any reason in just any way. Preaching is to be done by a man, called of God, who is compelled to herald the Bible with full conviction and faithful interpretation.

Culture is relentless in leading us to believe that all of life exists with ourselves at the center. When it comes to worshiping God, preference gives way to His worth and we are to strive for unity within the Body.

Expository preaching frees us up to trust God as we deliver His Word to His people. We're given permission to relish His Word and we're unfettered from the urgent as we preach through the Bible verse by verse.

As I sit here quietly while my little boy naps, I remember that day one month ago so vividly. On that day I realized that I was miscarrying our second child. It was the child who we had been dreaming of and planning for after receiving news that I was expecting. This was the child who we could not wait to meet. This was the child to whom our little…

We may not be able to make it to every hospital stay. But in most instances, presence at the hospital, surgery center or doctor’s office will provide a strategic Great Commission platform. Let’s not waste it.

Recovering from feminism and embracing God’s idea of womanhood is far more than a throwback to a 1950s television show. True freedom is knowing that God had a good design when he created us male and female.

illustrations are often a critical part of preaching and can help crystalize truth. However, illustrations that are not developed or used well can actually distract or mislead from the truth and, in some cases, call your credibility into question.

Here’s the rub: We don’t always want to love Jesus. Living in light of truth is hard and living comfortable lives according to our flesh is easy. It’s hard to put Christ first when He calls us to love Him more than anyone or anything. And yet He promises the most joy when we seek Him alone as our greatest treasure.

One of the most formidable things that shaped who I am today is my sister, Amanda. She is now 21 years old, reads more books than I do, just graduated high-school, and has Down's Syndrome. And she is a means by which God has taught us to love him more.

Gospel Going When the World Says ‘Stay’

There is not shortage of challenges is answering the call to take the Gospel to those who have never heard it. Standing beside what seems an insurmountable wall of fear, financial challenges, real-life distractions, dangers, and, if we are honest, selfishness, we sit down. Or we turn around. Or we try to find some other wall that is easier to climb. And still, God has called us onward.

These reminders help us eliminate the shame we feel after disobedience and push us to repent of our sin even when we're tempted to wallow in it. They are "gospelisms"—truths about the gospel that are easy to preach to one another when we begin to forget the gospel—and I hope that they help you as they have helped me.

It has become commonplace in the church for ills and problems to demand the majority of our attention and focus. In considering God's design for the body of Christ, what would it look like for pastors and laypeople to spend adequate time and energy seeking out solutions to these problems as well?

For the believer committed to upholding the authority of God's Word, seemingly inherent desires never justify a choice to sin. The real issue at the heart of the matter is the answer to the question: “Which matters most to me, the way I feel or what God says?”

True believers are held "in Christ," not by an armed guard. No, you are kept secure in Christ by the greatest power ever known - God Himself. And there has never been anyone able to snatch a person out of His hands.

I remember one time after church I came home all bent out of shape over how lonely I was. No one ever invited me to anything. I just really wanted adult interaction. My sweet husband just looked at me patiently and said, “Well, why don’t you invite some girls over?”

In our over exagerrated world, the good news tends to not be that amazing. We autocorrect this by letting a couple of pounds of air out of the tires of the gospel. Though we are prone to diminishing the spectacular, the fact remains, God shows grace to unworthy people.

Few things are as isolating as pain. When we suffer, we feel like no one can really understand what we are experiencing. Yet, no matter how alone we feel, we are never ultimately alone. Our heavenly Father is there.

There is something far worse than not having a crisis to engage. It is having a crisis but not engaging it. Faithfulness in our generation requires the church, and the pastors that lead it, to do our duty of preserving the faith and supporting the church.

As believers, we seek to cultivate deeper relationships with one another, moving beyond surface-level interactions. Here are three reasons why community should be a non-negotiable for members of your church.

The tyranny of hyper-spirituality our church culture had foisted on us set us up for disappointment because it held up religious experiences as the means of God’s grace, rather than the finished work of the cross.

June

Meeting with Christians of all ages is not a cure-all, and there is undeniable value in relationships with people of similar age and experience. But we must not despise the wisdom, experience, and friendship of all the people God places around us.

The Preacher's Life

Preacher, give fervent and persistent attention to your life outside of preaching. It is not enough to simply preach good doctrine - your people need to see consistent demonstration, not just hear good explanation.

The Pharisees were a very conservative group that was extremely committed to being holy and uncorrupted by the world. They were also very critical and judgmental towards non-Christians3 because they didn’t think non- Christians were as committed to following God as they were. And they were convinced that one of the easiest ways to be polluted by the world was…

Contrary to popular sentimentalism, we are not singing for “an audience of one.” While we do sing to worship our Savior, we also sing to rehearse the truth of the Gospel together and be sanctified by it.

If a church appears to exist only for the sake of its own survival, only for the sake of its own enterprise, only for the sake of its own internal experiences, no matter how big it gets, it is not likely fruitful but more likely swollen.

We all, at some point, are overwhelmed with burdens that are too heavy for us each to carry alone. Sometimes God acts in our lives without using others to meet our needs, but His normal mode of operation is to use wise believers in the Body of Christ—His church— to help us understand, grow, and grieve.

May

At its best, my desire to be clever is a blessing given by a creator God who made me in his image. We long to create as a reflection of the image of God that was put in us. But at its worst, my longings for originality show a heart that says, “Did God really say?”

He hated wickedness, so much that he bled to wound it to the heart; he died that it might die; he was buried that he might bury it in his tomb; and he rose that he might forever trample it beneath his feet.

The Preacher's Subject Matter

Before Carl F.H. Henry became the premier evangelical theologian of the twentieth century, he first was a nominal Episcopalian in need of the mercy of God. Thankfully that mercy came through the air assault of a persistent widow.

If your church orients its weekend gathering around reaching seekers, it's quite possible you've adopted some working assumptions and programmatic arrangements that actually turn the biblical shape of evangelism and mission upside down.

Without minimizing the importance of the election or impugning anyone who is a political junkie, I want to offer a gentile reminder for Christians who might be getting a little too wrapped up in the election.

If I’m being honest, I feel that I have to hit a home run or I have wasted everyone’s time that week. Does the pastor prepare his sermon so that it’s a base hit or do you swing for the fences every week?

Experience-driven revival is more like a flash flood than a mighty river. Heightened experience certainly leaves its mark, some of which may be good wherever it meets orthodoxy, but a reformational revival is a life-giving river which has continuing positive effects.

“I saw everyone staring at him, but I couldn’t just watch him struggling like that. I was afraid he might hit me, but I thought it would be better for me to risk being hurt than for me to just let him hurt alone.”

There are those Sundays when you wake up with the resurrection on your mind. These are the days that you know – you know – that Jesus is alive, and because He lives, everything is different. There are those Sundays. And then there are the other ones.

Church membership may not seem very important at the outset of a church plant. But at some point in the process, the congregation will need to know who “they” are, so that they can fulfill the biblical commands for the church.

I think according to Scripture, we have many reasons why we should be willing, even grateful, to step into relationships in which we are met with differences, criticisms, and even opposition and negativity.

How Chronic Illness Shows Christ's Glory

My immune system rips ragged holes in my intestines the way a tailor tears broadcloth. You can imagine the results: I wake up, eat, drink, read, work, drive, and play with my kids while in constant pain. All this bodily chaos disrupts every part of my life. By the time I reach the end of a day, I too often feel like a useless, paralyzed limb on Christ’s body.

What advice would you give to a first-time pastor?

Remembering our profession of faith and what we thought about Jesus should motivate us to continue walking with Him, so that He is the One who is establishing our values, guiding our thinking, and directing our conduct.

If virtuous conduct is what we mean by telling our little girls they’re “princesses,” then cool. I wonder, though, if “princess” culture can, perhaps unintentionally, encourage girls to construe their self-identity narcissistically and aesthetically.

When my kids were young we set certain rhythms of life that allowed the gospel to flourish in our home through the practice of family worship. And we knew that if we could not answer the question of when, the how of family worship would become irrelevant.

How Affection Toward God is Inseparable from Authentic Worship

When we perceive something of the Lord’s beauty, majesty, knowledge, or some other noble characteristic through what is said or sung or brought to the mind, our emotions are not to be either worked up by conscious effort or checked by deliberate willfulness. To do so would mean that we must take our gaze away from Him to ourselves.

We know that we should value God more and above anything else, but we also know that we don’t always tell ourselves the truth. So how can we know what we truly value? I’d propose a simple exercise to find out . . .

I know I am not unlike many other leaders in ministry. When we relax, if we are able to relax, we feel guilty. Our math looks like this: doing more = more done. Some will read this will say— “Of course!” The assumption here is that “more” is best.

General Revelations of an Alien Savior

Our twenty-first-century culture is quite taken with a literal “alien savior”—Doctor Who. Like ancient kings of old, the Doctor spans the gap between humanity and that which lies outside our grasp. But there is one significant difference . . .

Let us learn from Moses while we cling to and follow Christ our righteousness, knowing that it is his glory, not our own that we pursue and love. It is in this pursuit that we’ll find ourselves getting more face time on the ground rather than counting our wounds in the mirror.

Yet both my personal experience and anecdotal observations, tell me that the vast majority of 'robust dialogue' or 'authentic conversation' is a poor front for what the Bible calls 'meddling in controversies'.

You know the feeling as well as I do. There is someone who brings something to us – it’s an accusation, it’s a criticism, it’s a rebuke – it’s a whatever. We. Must. Respond. Curious, though, that Jesus did not feel the same need.

You have often trembled while I have told you of your sins and of the wrath to come, but you have met your bad companion at the door, or you have gone home and attended parties of gaiety, and every godly thought has been quenched.

It’s right as a believer to be alarmed, saddened, and discomfited by the modern trajectory of the American soul. In all seriousness, feeling these things does not make you geriatric. It signals that you have a conscience, and that it is active. But I do not come to bury our culture.

I once had an interesting conversation with an agnostic about a Christian worship song they enjoyed because it reminded them “God loves them so much.” Interestingly enough, the worship song did not specifically mention Jesus’ name or his Gospel work on the cross.

Multicultural Glory in the Church

A cowboy church or a country music church may reach cowboys or country music lovers, but is this anything like what God intends to promote as the primary social implication of the cross? Does it depict real earth-side yearning for a future glorious church? We have diminished the meaning of the church by doing this.

We spend hours each week reading, meditating on, and praying through our text. We have a few days to become intimately acquainted with it. We strive to learn all of its nuances, textures, hues, and beauty. And then after we preach, we usually don't hear much from anybody about any of it.

The picture God wants to paint in your church is full of different colors. There is no crayon, paintbrush, marker, or watercolor He doesn’t want to use. The picture might not look like it was originally drawn, but I promise this – the new artwork will be a masterpiece.

Thoughts on the Leader's Prayer Life

If we simply want more people or better people, a set of programs and events might accomplish that. But if we want Christ-exalting, Christ-loving, Christ-following people, we have to get more personal and go deeper.

Far too many of our conversations are about why one church is the best in polity, or how a specific kind of music, preaching style, discipleship model, major, leadership training program, or missions agency is superior to all others.

It is possible to be a pastor-theologian who not only feeds the sheep a rich theistic diet (which is the essence of the office per Christ’s words to Peter in John 21), but makes contributions beyond the pulpit.

Rethinking Inquiries About Departed Loved One's Eternal State

Men especially don’t know what to do with their passions and desires. We either give in to them recklessly, or try to suppress them, which is equally dangerous. We’ve now had several generations of “men without chests,” as C.S. Lewis suggests, who lack deep wells of emotional energy.

"One of the most intense times of worship I have ever experienced.” This caption came across my Instagram notifications a few weeks back. I never would have expected a picture of a young man standing in front of a mirror in his bathroom with a bewildered smirk on his face.

One of the most frustrating aspects of counseling students is the response of many parents. As I try to dig down to the heart issues, many parents want to rush to "relocate" their kids. The parents often think the solution is relocation: a new school, a "ranch" for extended counseling, or an extended trip to stay with family.

There are times when I’m most likely to wonder about greener pastures, to entertain the idea that somewhere in Christendom exists a perfectly behaved church that is easy to “parent.” But that “Leave it to Beaver” church does not exist.

Pastors sometimes say stupid things. Sometimes those stupid things are catchy and wind up being repeated by many other pastors. One of the more preposterous pithy statements I have heard many preachers say is, “Sheep are dumb.”

Boy was I shocked when a classmate ran into a man from his church and told me, “Hey, I want to introduce you to an elder at my church.” Dumbfounded and ignorant I said, “Wait, I thought you were Baptist?!”

My face fell as my husband gave me his honest feedback. I couldn’t blame him for speaking the truth—I had asked for his comments. Deep down, however, I didn’t want to receive his correction; I wanted to be right.